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Solana Tokens Continue Steep Slide While Major Cryptos Stay Flat
SOL has dropped nearly 8% in the past 24 hours, adding to a 20% slide over the past week.
Updated Dec 29, 2022, 7:50 p.m. Published Dec 29, 2022, 9:42 a.m.
Crypto markets slid a nominal 0.8% in the past 24 hours as broader equity markets grappled with renewed coronavirus fears stemming from China.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index and Japan’s Nikkei 225 had shed 1% as of Asian afternoon hours on Thursday, while the Shanghai Composite fell 0.44%. Stocks fell amid weakened risk appetite on one of the final trading days of the year, according to Bloomberg.
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The bearish sentiment, however, didn't seem to affect major cryptocurrencies, with bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH) and several other major tokens such as polkadot (DOT), binance coin (BNB) and XRP (XRP) seeing nominal change.
Solana (SOL), however, dropped as much as 10% in the past 24 hours, adding to a 20% slide over the past week. Selling pressure on the tokens came because of their close links to disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who faces charges of fraud and misappropriation of client funds.
Thursday's decline put SOL on track for nine straight days of losses, the longest run of declines since Sept. 17, 2021, based on Messari data.
Since 2020, Bankman-Fried has been a major proponent of the Solana network, launching the decentralized exchange Serum on the then-upstart network and investing heavily in the platform's projects.
Apart from prices, the value locked on Solana-based applications has declined 98% since November last year, DefiLlama data shows. Steep falls in Solana’s metrics came after the implosion of Terra network in May and a market-wide drop in July and after Bankman-Fried's FTX problems first came to light early last month.
Alternative currencies outside of the top 20 tokens by market capitalization saw slight changes as well, except for , which fell 5% over the past 24 hours, and luna classic (LUNC), which dropped 7%.
Meanwhile, premarket futures for the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500 both inched 0.5% higher, pointing to possible gains when the U.S. markets open on Thursday.
UPDATE (Dec. 29, 10:03 UTC): Adds SOL's streak of declines in fourth paragraph.
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Solana CME Futures Fell Short of BTC and ETH Debuts, but There's a Catch
When adjusted for asset market capitalization SOL's relative futures volume looks better, K33 Research noted.
What to know:
- Solana's SOL futures began trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) on Monday, with a notional daily volume of $12.3 million and $7.8 million in open interest, significantly lower than the debuts of bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) futures.
- Despite the seemingly lackluster debut, when adjusted to market value, SOL's first-day figures are more in line with BTC's and ETH's, according to K33 Research.
- Despite the bearish market conditions, the launch of CME SOL futures offers new ways for institutions to manage their exposure to the token, said Joshua Lim of FalconX.
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